Gentle & Lowly - Matthew 11:28-29 - The Heart of Jesus

All right. Hey guys, man, it's great to see you. We're excited to dive into a brand new sermon series this weekend, but I want to welcome you, especially if you are brand new with us. Guys, the Easter weekend is one of those things that we look forward to all year to celebrate the resurrection. Also have an opportunity to invite a lot of new people into our church. This was cool.

You guys can celebrate this with me. We do have 16 services across four locations of five campuses, but our very first service was Wednesday night college service. Three college kids gave their life to Christ and were baptized that very night.

All right. So man, this is, man, listen, this is, man, there's nothing greater than that than to see God move in that way. Hey, you might be brand new. This might be your first time ever with Mercy Hill, or it might be one of those things where you have kind of come in and out, but really have never really engaged that much. And if that's where you are, we want you to know across all of our low campus, of all of our campuses and locations that you are really an honored guest with us this weekend. We would love to get a chance to meet you, to hear your story, to tell you more about our church. We do have a gift for you at all of our locations, right outside of the lobby area, depending on what campus you're at, but there's a first time guest tent out there. We'd love to give you a gift and get to meet you. Man, we're a church that's about the next generation college students, church planning missions, and the hardest places on planet earth where Christ has not been named.

This is what it's about for us at Mercy Hill. But for some of you guys, you might think, man, that sounds really big and I'm not sure what it has to do with my life. Well, it really does because it all begins with each one of us just taking step after step after step in our spiritual journey. All right. So that's what we want to do first and foremost is meet you where you are and help you kind of take steps if that's something that you're interested in. All right. And part of that is that we dive into the Bible every single weekend. And that is what we're going to do this weekend. So if you have a copy of scripture, you could take it out and turn with me to Matthew chapter 11.

All right. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 11 for this weekend. But what I want you guys to hear is that we are starting a brand new sermon series this weekend that will carry us for the next 10 weeks. So this sermon kind of serves as an introduction for this whole series, but really the big idea is here in this sermon when we see in Matthew chapter 11 that Jesus Christ describes his own heart in a very particular way.

And it's going to be important for us to catch. All right. I don't know what comes to your mind when you think about Jesus. I don't know what comes to your mind when you think about God.

I don't know what you think that his thoughts towards you are, but we're going to get a chance to dive into that exact idea for like the next 10 weeks. And the reason that is so important is because many of us, all right. And I know not everybody, okay. I know not everybody is from the South or grew up in the South.

North Carolina is a very hot place. People are moving here from all over. All right.

So you may be here from the West Coast or you may be here from the Northeast, something like that. We're glad to have you. Okay. We don't really want you to turn here into there, but we're really glad that you're here. Okay. We're excited that you're here. Hey, a few things you got to know.

If you're, if you, if you didn't grow up here, you did, you notice a few things about the South. Man, tea is sweet here. Okay. Mac and cheese is a vegetable here. All right.

Normally, depending on where you are, not really this year, summer starts in about April here. All right. One of the things you got to know if you're not from here is that when somebody says, bless your heart, that is not necessarily a compliment. Okay. You know what I'm talking about. Right. There's some things that are just kind of that way. Hey, one of the things about the South, right, is that there is, and this is just demographic studies.

We'll show you this. There's just a religious tradition here and, and what that, and that's good and bad. Okay. It's good because people get to hear. It's bad because here's what happens.

All right. People end up having mechanical parts of a story and they think that that means that they understand the heart of Christ. And here's what I mean. You grew up in the South. A lot of people are like, man, vacation Bible school, my background, my aunt Sally's a Sunday school teacher.

I was invited to a youth camp as a kid or whatever. And what happens is if somebody says church, Bible, Jesus, go, a lot of people can say, virgin birth, cross, resurrection. That's it. And you have these mechanical parts of the story, but you can have the mechanical parts of the story without understanding the reason behind them or the heart of Christ for you. You got to understand this. What Jesus did matters only when we understand who He is. In this series, we're not just going to chase what He did.

Although I'm going to talk a lot about that, but in this series, we're not just going to chase what He did. We want to talk about who Jesus is. What He did only matters if we can understand who He is towards us. And we see that when Jesus Christ begins to explain His heart for humanity, His heart for you this weekend, no matter what location you're at.

Here's the big idea already on the screen. What Jesus did flows from who He is and who He is, is gentle and lowly. I know that may not, that's theological, that's Bible language, but here's what it means.

Gentle and lowly means that His expression toward you is not harsh and arrogant. Again, what do you see? What is the look on His face when you picture Jesus? Is it a scowl? Is He pointing His finger again at every single failure that you've ever had in your life?

Is He exploiting the gap between how awesome He is and how terrible you are? And that's what you envision in your mind. Many of us think about God, and here's what we see, that Jesus reluctantly came because He was sent by God the Father. He came, but He didn't want to, to save a people that He's secretly annoyed with and disgusted by, and maybe even frustrated with even here today. And what I want you to see is that He doesn't come that way to you. When you picture Christ, hopefully after this series and hopefully after today, I hope what you see is that when you come to Him, what you get back from Him is gentleness. Man, He's not, He's not crossed His arms, shaking His head.

He's got His arms wide open, kneeled down, nodding you over, saying, come to Me, come to Me. That's who He is in His heart. It's not who we are in our heart many times.

That's who He is in His heart. And we see that in Matthew chapter 11. We're only going to look at three, really two, but three verses here this weekend.

Let me dive into them. Here we go. Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light. I know at Easter weekend, this happens every single year at Mercy Hill, there are going to be hundreds of people here that maybe even have never sat through what I'm doing right now.

You're like, man, what is this? Okay. It's about a 30 ish minute. Okay.

Maybe closer to 40. All right. Teaching. And what we're going to do is what we do every single week. Okay. Every single week, we open up the, open up the Word of God. I'm going to read from it. And then we're going to explain what it means because it's not about what I think. It's just exposing the truth of what God's Word says.

And so that's what I want to do with us this weekend. Let's just kind of walk through it slowly here. Verse 28, Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. What does this mean? Here's very simple what it means. Jesus is talking to a group of people, and I would put us squarely in that camp, okay, who feel burdened. It is an agrarian type, and I know that many of us didn't grow up on a farm or whatever, okay, but it's an agrarian type of thing. And what He's saying is when you look and you see that animal that's been saddled with a burden that they just can't even bear, and they're struggling to walk, and they're giving way, they're weary.

That's another word in another translation that comes out. They are weary. They are burdened. And He's talking to a group of people that feel that way for a very particular reason. I don't know if you've ever felt weary.

I don't know if you've ever felt burdened, all right. This took the country by storm about a hundred years ago, 1930. A guy named Joseph Crater was a New York State Supreme Court judge, all right, and he, man, very well known in that area. He walks out of a restaurant in Manhattan, August 6, 1930, walks out of that restaurant and is never seen again, all right. I mean, and it took the country by storm. Apparently I wasn't there, okay, but it took the took the storm, the country by storm. Even as late as 2008, the Baltimore Sun had reprinted some of this stuff because people were like, what happened? I mean, you just walk out of a restaurant, this very high profile figure never seen again.

The only bit of evidence they ever got was a note that he had written to his wife on the day that he disappeared with a check for a large sum of money. And all the note said was, I am very weary. That's it. Weariness can make you just kind of disappear. It can make you just kind of walk out.

It can make you just kind of quit on everything that is going on all around you. I'm very weary. I don't know if you feel very weary. Man, I know that coming out of COVID, the word for last year was, if you remember, languishing, okay.

That's not us saying that. Pop culture guys said, man, that's the word people are feeling. It's not, it's this, man, we're coming out of a tough season and there's so many burdens with family and financial and there's different things that are going on. Man, in our church, if you've been around, you know this, we've experienced an immense amount of tragedy in the first just three months of the year with people that are walking through very hard things.

There's a lot of burdens, but listen, again, I can't just stand up here and talk about what I want. We got to get at what Jesus is talking about. And what Jesus is talking about in this passage is not a generic burden.

What he's talking about in this passage is a religious burden. Now you say religious, isn't this a church? It is, but let me define religion for you, okay. Religion, whether it comes from a southern pulpit with a Bible open or it comes across the world in a world religion, religion is anything that is preached that says you got to do X, Y, and Z to make God love you. And if you can succeed in making yourself acceptable, then God will accept you. See, Jesus stands up before a group of people, and I am today, and he says, if you are burdened, if you are weary from all of the religion that is being preached in your day, you got to do X, you got to do Y, you got to do Z.

See, Jesus was speaking to a group of people that were living under the tyranny of a bunch of religious leaders who love to layer rule upon rule upon rule that created fear upon fear upon fear that if you can't live up to everything you are supposed to live up to, then God is just waiting to smash you like a bug and kick you out of the family, all right. And that's religion. Y'all, it's preached all over the world. Live right, and God will do right by you. Sometimes it's even preached with a Bible, sadly, but Jesus is saying here, and this is the most basic point, there is another way.

There is a way that's light. There is a way that is easy, that comparatively, when it comes to the religion that is Matthew 23, Jesus said, they love to tie up burdens upon you, and so that you are crushed. Guys, we see this in our day too with religion.

Maybe some of you have even grown up in this. You know, you have something good and godly, like, hey, sex should be inside, should only be practiced inside of marriage, but what do people do with it in their humanity? Then they say, they come back, and they start layering up the rules, right, and they say, well, you know, we know that's what God wants, so what we're going to do is we're going to say that nobody should ever dance ever, because you know what dancing leads to, right? And then somebody else comes up, and they say, well, actually, you know, the problem is not the dancing. The problem is the music that's got a beat in it, okay, because, you know, if you hear music with a beat, it leads to dancing, and we all know where that leads, right?

And so then the next person comes in, and they say, actually, no, it's not the music that's the problem, it's the places that people go where there is music, so never go to a movie, never go to a mall, people don't do that anymore anyway, all right, but you know, never go to these things, because you may hear music that has a beat, and if you do, you may want to dance, and well, we all know where that, and that's, that's, and I'm using that as kind of a silly example. Y'all, Jesus is talking to a people that are living under that times 1,000, and some of us might be living under that today. You're living under all these rules and regulations. You're layering things up in order to make yourself acceptable before God, and you got to understand something today.

That will never end. If that, if that is the model, I've got to do more things so that I can justify myself before God every single night. You will lay your head on a pillow, and you'll realize I failed today. I got to have more rules tomorrow, more rules and more fear, and it'll produce a little bit of right behavior, but it will not produce a heart that loves God. It will end up producing a heart that resents God, because He's asking you to do a bunch of things that you could never do in a million years. This is religion. I know somebody here might say today, man, I'm not a religious person at all, okay, and I know what our campuses we're gonna have.

I mean, there'll be dozens of people like that all of our locations, all right, and so that might be you today. You're like, well, what does this say to me? I'm gonna tell you, man, we even take God out of the picture. We live in a day and age where self-justification runs rampant. Just look at our culture. Everybody is trying to be quote, a good person.

They're trying to prove to the world that they're a good person. Look, I recycle. Oh no, I have a dog, and he looks too much like a purebred animal, and so therefore, I didn't rescue him. I'm terrible, right? I didn't post fast enough on social media of this condemnation, or somebody found a McDonald's wrapper in my car. Okay, I'm a terrible person. This is, and we all, we layer up all of these rules that society says, and here's the funny thing about them.

Just wait five minutes, they'll change tomorrow. It's self-justification to the max. Man, I saw, I don't know, you guys know Hamilton's here, okay? You saw this.

It just got me thinking about that in downtown Greensboro. I don't know if anybody maybe picked this up on the news. It was a small news story. Anybody, any of you guys see the fact that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock?

Anybody see that? Okay, all right. So this is what, this is what I thought about this the other day, and I thought it's funny, because the self-justification is how fast can you condemn Will Smith when 200 years ago the justification would have been calling for him to charge and to challenge Chris Rock probably to a duel to the death. And if you don't do that, then you're a coward. It never ends. The self-justification will, whether it's religious, whether it's something in our culture, what Jesus is going to say today is that there is another way. Don't live under that yoke. Don't live under that burden. Look what it says in verse 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and I am lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I don't know where you go to get out of the feeling that God is upset with the way that you are living, but you got to go somewhere. I mean every human that's ever lived on the face of the planet one day at some point realizes, man I'm kind of wicked and deceitful and I've lived a life that if there is a God in heaven he's probably looking upon it and maybe he's frowning. A lot of people in their life what they decide to do is they just decide to distract their way out forever and it's endless binges on Netflix and it's endless amounts of different addictions and alcohol and food and all this and it's just trying to get away from that feeling of condemnation. Of course other people turn to the burden of religion and they take that yoke upon them that I'm going to take this harsh yoke that is fueled by pride and arrogance and I'm going to try to do better every single day and it's exhausting and here comes Jesus and he says oh no no no not that yoke take my yoke upon you.

Now my this agrarian again okay a yoke is what you would put on like an oxen or a beast of burden that's going to carry something. What he's saying is the religious one is too heavy you need to put mine on instead and here's the deal we're going to get into what Jesus did in just a minute okay because what he did matters but I want to talk about who he is before we talk about what he did and I don't know if you caught this but what he says in verse 29 is I am gentle and I am lowly in heart. Church do you realize today there are four gospels 89 chapters of text and ain't but one place where Jesus tells you what his heart is like and he says it's gentle what does that mean gentle means the opposite of harsh gentle means that the way we react to each other is not the way that Jesus reacts to us. Gentle means that when we have this mental picture of a God in heaven and Jesus Christ the son of God looking at us with his finger pointed pointing out every single thing that we've ever done wrong when we see him and his arms are crossed and his head is shaking and he's scowled up on his face actually that's the wrong picture that if we come to him the pen that's what he says those who come to me that when we come to him that is not his expression toward us at all his expression is even though men even though you are one who is sinful and has failed man I'm bridging the gap between you and I I'm coming to meet you where you are my arms are wide open toward you he is gentle the scripture says that he is lowly we don't use that language anymore except sometimes maybe around Christmas or something in a religious setting lowly just means humble okay now humble itself humble actually is not the easiest thing to define either all right but lowly means humble and humble means this a modest estimation of yourself a modest estimation of one's own importance now don't get this twisted Jesus Christ is the son of God he is the greatest at everything that ever was okay I'm not saying he's not what it's saying is like Philippians 2 says that as he comes to us his heart towards us takes a posture of humility how different is that than the culture that we live in I don't know if you guys have seen and I wasn't around I wish I was but some of you guys were probably around to actually see Muhammad Ali fight okay and man if you but there's there's documentaries out now documentaries coming out and what did Ali say about himself just in line with every other athlete in our world and our tradition and our culture Ali was the greatest right and he would tell you that Sonny Liston that was the big fight Sonny Liston will fall in eight to show that I am great that was his line all right he was the greatest what athletes do athletes beat their chest athletes point their finger at the difference between you and I mere mortals okay and how great they are that that's kind of what and and listen I'm not busting on them this is kind of what our natural disposition is a lot of times is that we don't come in in humility and lowliness we're not trying to bridge the gap between somebody else and ourselves many times we are pointing to it and exploiting it but Jesus Christ comes and at the very center of his heart he is gentle and he is humble towards us you know it says that that he's that way in his heart and you guys know this doesn't mean just you know an actual heart right I grew up on the King James version I don't know if any of you guys did all right but it was it was a great version of the Bible for being like a 10 or 12 year old because a lot of times when we say heart the King James version would say bowels all right so that just creates a lot of fun when you're a middle schooler or whatever okay uh but you know the the idea is not it's not heart or bowels or something else that in different cultures would say it different ways the the point is the emotional center I even want to say the heartbeat that's mixing metaphor but you don't you understand I mean what what animates Jesus the very center of them you can say it like this Jesus is gentle and lowly in his emotional center and here's why that matters and I want to read this exactly the way that I have written it matters for this reason that Jesus didn't humble himself to the cross for you because God sent him to do a mission that he didn't really want to to save a people that he secretly disgusted by he didn't cut his posture toward us is not all right God I'll go I mean they've messed it up again can you believe these people they can't go one day without failing us without failing you they just can't get it together right that's not his posture toward you I don't know what your last week has looked like your last year has looked like this may be the first time that you've stepped foot in a church since the last Easter I don't know what it's looked like for you but if you would come to him today you're going to find a savior who is not looking staying there with his arms crossed tapping his foot where you've been instead he is going to be here in gentleness and humility toward you he is going to bridge the gap and bring you in many of us secretly view Jesus in that analogy that I've used before think of a husband whose wife comes to him and says do you love me and his response is how could you ask me that don't you see me get up every single day don't you see me breaking my back for you and this family how could you ask me that and walks out the door and she's left dangling on the end of a rope looking at what he did but not sure how he feels about her Jesus is not that way to you what Jesus is to you is yeah I'm gonna get into what he did okay what and what he did is pretty amazing it's actually why we celebrate like crazy today but he did it because his heart is gentle toward you and his heart is lowly toward you now what did Jesus do the point is this we've got to see what Jesus did in light of who he is and in light of who he is this is what Jesus did for you he came and he lived a life that you didn't live we could live a thousand more lifetimes and we would mess it up how many of us can even go one day without breaking one of the 10 commandments right and Jesus comes and he fulfills every single law that God would say leads to human flourishing everything that God wanted the human to do he did it but at the end of his life man he went to the cross to die not for his sin but for yours it is what we call the great exchange Jesus goes to the cross and at the cross he gives you what he deserved man the rewards of a life well lived before God he gives us his righteousness it's called gift righteousness but what does he take man he takes what we deserved which is the death and separation from God this is why we celebrate today that Jesus came and he died of death that was supposed to be ours and then three days later praise God he walks out of the tomb alive why because death had claimed one that wasn't his God wakes him up and here's the deal he becomes the firstborn of a new creation he becomes the one that we through our faith are now wrapped up into when we pray that sinner's prayer when we and we say it in the south become a Christian ask Jesus into your heart you know whatever however you want to say when we step over that line and say God I realize what I've done I admit I'm a sinner I believe in what Christ has done for me not my works but for me and I confess him as the Lord of my life when we step over that line we are bound to Christ and as long as he is alive we will be alive and he done defeated death once church he's never gonna have to do it again he will be alive for all time and we will be with him this is what he's done but what he's done only matters if we see who he is towards us and his heart towards us I've got three questions that I want to leave us with I don't they're not answers they're questions okay and what I'm gonna say the question I'm gonna kind of guide us based on this truth toward what I think the right answer would be and I'm gonna say hey this is where we need to kind of land the plane here this weekend number one very quickly what is Jesus disposition toward you looking at this text I mean he's looking at the people that are burdened by religion man he sees what they've been tied up with and he says no no my way is a different way my way is I come and bear that burden for you and then you believe in me and every single time God looks at you from now on you put your faith in me he doesn't see all your failures he doesn't see all the times that you messed up instead he will see what I have done and my work applied to you this disposition toward us he didn't do that stuff because God sent him on some mission that he didn't really really want to do he did it because he is gentle and he is lowly toward you the best way I can explain it is this when you see Jesus when you see him in your mind's eye what's the look on his face and can you see that it is one of welcoming and understanding today and he's calling you to himself he's nodding you over he's not shaking his head number two what is our disposition toward others in light of who Jesus is towards us okay you think about this what what is what is our relationships looking like if you're a believer today and maybe you're part of mercy hill maybe you've been a believer for a long time one quick application that we can make I think for this weekend is what is Jesus disposition toward us kind of push us to in terms of our disposition towards others right and I mean people that get our order wrong people people in the community that we see man our kids are our parents siblings people that we're in community group with like in our relationships are we the ones I mean I'm speaking myself before anybody else okay are we the ones with arms crossed heads shaking why can't you get it together or are we a people that realize man praise God Jesus don't do that to us right right can we can we see that today and we can we allow that to change our disposition towards others I know that everybody here and at our campus is not a parent okay I know that but if you if you are a parent maybe you'll resonate with this because one of the areas in our life that we get this wrong so many times is with our own kids we love them so much and they annoy us so much sometimes right it's like we we love them and yet at the same time we can become frustrated and we can end up not having the disposition towards them that praise God Jesus Christ has toward us you know a long time ago you know I don't know it's been decades now this poem was written and it's been it's been put out there in so many different forms and all of that I grabbed it and I want to show you an example of what I'm talking about every human knows what it's like okay to mess up in okay to mess up in this area and not have the disposition that Christ has toward us towards somebody else parents and fathers maybe even in particular understand it acutely and every one of us have that understanding we wake up to it but the question is then what do we do you guys check out this video it's only a couple of minutes listen son I'm saying this as you lie asleep one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blonde curls stickily wet on your damp forehead I have stolen into your room alone just a few minutes ago as I sat reading my paper in the library a stifling wave of remorse swept over me guiltily I came to your bedside there are things I was thinking son I had been crossed to you I had scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor at breakfast I found fault too you spilled things you gulped down your food you put your elbows on the table you spread butter too thick on your bread and as you started off to play I made for my train you turned and waved your hand and called goodbye daddy and I frowned and said in reply hold your shoulders back then it began all over again in the late afternoon as I came up the road I spied you down on your knees playing marbles there were holes in your stockings I humiliated you before your friends by marching you ahead of me to the house stockings were expensive and if you had to buy them you would be more careful imagine that son from a father do you remember later when I was reading in the library how you came in timidly with a sort of hurt look in your eyes when I glanced up over my paper impatient at the interruption you hesitated at the door what is it you want I snapped you said nothing but ran across in one tempestuous plunge and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither and then you were gone pattering up the stairs well son it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me what has habit been doing to me the habit of finding fault of reprimanding this was my reward to you for being a boy it was not that I did not love you it was that I expected too much of youth I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character the little heart of yours was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills this was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night nothing else matters tonight son I have come to your bedside in the darkness and I have knelt there ashamed it is feeble atonement I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours but tomorrow I will be a real daddy real daddy I will chum with you and suffer when you suffer and laugh when you laugh I will bite my tongue when impatient words come I will keep saying as if it were a ritual he is nothing but a boy a little boy I am afraid I have visualized you as a man yet as I see you now son crumpled and weary in your cot I see that you are still a baby yesterday you were in your mother's arms your head on her shoulder I have asked too much too much man it's a it's a powerful poem all right but here here's the thing that I got I got to get you to see every single human understands what it's like to realize man I have not been treating people the right way and then to have that moment of what he called direct quote a feeble atonement I'm going to tell you why it's feeble because whoever wrote that poem within three days was treating their kid the same way unless something changed that rearranged the heart and it cannot just be I'm gonna not do it anymore you see what I'm saying like we all know what that feeling is like and then all of a sudden to say I'm not gonna do it and then we know what it's like to go do it again what we've got to see and sit in front of is this beautiful truth that in the gospel we are guaranteed a God who doesn't treat us that way even though we fail and treat others exactly that way he doesn't treat us that way that is not his disposition toward us and if we can stare right in the face of that over and over and over guys at mercy hill we have a simple strategy for you for growth it's it's very simple come to the gathering get in a small group learn how to give your time talent treasure and go and be on mission that's it gather groups give go this is not a religious system of building up for good works before God all these things are is giving us an opportunity to sit and look at the disposition that God has toward us and his love for us hey every one of us has one of these here right here man this is going to be our our group study for the next 10 weeks when our groups kick back off I just want to get you to grab one of those and take it with you it's going to be an incredible study if you're not in a group man I pray that you would get in one so that we can drink deeper of the heart of Christ towards us so that we can actually change right thirdly and finally last thing that I want to get into here last question is this will we choose to come to Christ today there are only two ways to think about getting into a relationship with God two ways worldwide one is religion no matter how you dress it up and the other is this way that Jesus talks about where his burden is easy and light and coming to Christ I don't know which one of these you may decide to choose today but I hope it's not religion I've already shared this one time with you guys but if it is religion you're in for a rude awakening I'm going to tell you why because if you start trying to self-justify in your life and you say well here's what I'm going to do man I'm going to start I'm going to start coming to church as much as I can right and then uh well we talked about dancing today so I'm just not going to do that anymore okay and then we say well man okay I'm going to start giving I need to start giving something somewhere and then I'm going to make sure that I end up with the right amount of uh you know the right amount of friends and not the wrong amount of friends and not the the wrong types of friends and all that kind of stuff you start layering up rules upon rules you're going to start feeling weary you're going to start feeling burdened and what's going to end up happening is that sooner or later I pray sooner or later here you are going to end up breaking okay so this is what's going to happen in your life now here's the only the only worst news that and this is what this is what happens if you ever met anybody that grew up in church and had a vibrant relationship god and then one day they don't anymore that's what happened the only thing worse than that is meeting somebody that just like that drywall was trying to do actually can carry all that stuff because they become the most prideful people on the planet right this is the path of religion it's not the path that jesus calls you to instead he calls you to a different path man he calls you to a path of salvation through him through coming to him in the gospel here's what we're going to do with the rest of my time all right i've got a really cool testimony video that i want you to see that's going to prepare our hearts for what your life can look like when you give it over to him and then we're going to have an invitation and a call for baptism and that'll be it you guys check out this video back in about 2019 i was introduced to mercy hill by my wife and her younger sister emma's been pulling me to mercy hill since she started coming to mercy hill she's a huge part of our story i prayed for so long for tori and christopher to be baptized and for them to live in a way that obeys christ i just remember having this feeling of knowing that god was going to redeem this family and knowing that god was writing something really really deep here i've always been a you know believer but didn't really feel like a believer i've always been a you know believer but didn't really feel a part of the christian church or a church really at all i was juggling a lot of things in my life my career and becoming like a new father i was struggling and i was trying to do it on my own as far as like i need to make sure that i'm leading my family and not showing like any sort of like pain or any sort of emotion because i'm supposed to be leading us and keeping everything together uh and and we talked about that in church i remember one sunday you know the bible was speaking to me and saying like hey it's okay to feel what you're feeling right now i think it's important for you to share that with your family and your community and so i reached out to my community and then finally at a breaking point decided to like recommit my life to christ and just say yes god like please take all the pain away and like please help me as soon as the worship music came on i remember stepping out into the aisle and then just bawling crying and i came back into the to the worship service with my wife and emma and my family surrounding me to like welcome me to the to the baptism pool and i like right there in the middle and i just felt like i was at home you just see like changes in people and it was like once he got baptized something clicked with him he really stepped into the role of leading our family and he was happy and he was giving his life all his worries over and over and over and over and knowing that he didn't have to be perfect i just felt so at peace with him doing that that i felt that i needed to also be a leader of our family and show our daughters one day that this is the next step this is what you do i had been very hesitant to get baptized because i didn't know how to be in front of people and i was sitting in church and i got up at the very end and i saw sally nance and i said sally i want to get baptized and she said oh my gosh this is amazing and she just hugged me so tight got baptized and she said oh my gosh this is amazing got baptized and i stood up and i was just like this is amazing now we can lead our children in a christ-centered family emma's been the number one praying person in our lives just seeing her pray so hard for the two of us and for our family like that's incredible it's just really cool to me that now it feels like we are praying for other families and we are praying for other people in our lives i just feel like i'm a new person and i'm excited to to share that and i want i want that to spread all over amen amen hey guys stories just like that are playing out not just at mercy hill church great churches all over our community hundreds of stories are playing out like that all the time man god is changing people's lives the question is for you today man what does it mean what are you carrying are you trying to be a good person you're trying to make sure that you've done enough for the big man upstairs it's a never-ending exhausting hamster wheel it's not the life that jesus calls you to jeremiah 6 says this stand at the crossroads and look for the people jesus calls you to jeremiah 6 says this stand at the crossroads and look for the path of rest and then here comes jesus saying i give rest to those who come to me his heart is gentle and lowly toward you if you come to him it doesn't say indiscriminately to everybody it says to those who come to me would you come to him today hey guys we're gonna take just a minute here and bow our heads and close our eyes if you take a note you can put that stuff down we got a few minutes here scheduled just for an opportunity for invitation guys the reason why we bow our heads and close our eyes here for just a minute is really to get away from the endless distractions that are all around us and create some space in our life for god to move for god to work are you ready to step across the line today and to give it to christ all right jesus christ you think about you think about what jesus did i mean think about it just for a moment he's telling us today my way is easy and light y'all it wasn't easier light for him i mean he was nailed to a cross and died in our place it is only easy and light because of what christ has done in carrying all of our burdens all of our sin the weight of all of it was put upon him so it wouldn't be for us we can only take upon his yoke because he already took upon our yoke this is the god we serve this is the son would you come to him today if you are ready to step over that line and most people man it's been months in the making maybe maybe it's not maybe you're you're brand new here you're one of our campuses here first time ever in a church we hear that story sometimes as well but if god has been moving in your life or if today's even the first time if he is calling you today you've got to hear me there is no guarantee he will call you tomorrow and there's no guarantee you will be here tomorrow is he calling you today give your life to him today if you want to take that step with me uh here today then do this uh pray with me and i'm gonna pray abc admit believe and confess all right so you just pray in your heart after me all right father we come before you today knowing that you've done everything necessary to save us you pray these words after me here we go i admit that i'm a sinner i know that created separation from you and i know that religion is not the way back but i believe that jesus christ took the burden of my sin on the cross he took the penalty of my sin there and three days later he rose from the grave with his hand open and extended to me and i want to join him in that and then pray this i confess him abc i confess him as the lord of my life save me every single creature in the world every single christian that has ever lived on the face of the planet there is a moment in time where they weren't a believer and then they were the gospel is foolishness until one day it's not to us man are you putting your faith in christ are you praying that he would come into your life right now lord i pray for these that are that are making that decision right now god i pray you give them courage give them boldness keep your heads bowed your eyes closed for just a minute at our campuses i'm going to ask you to take a bold step all right hey listen if you place faith in christ today if you prayed with me for the first time today i'm going to ask you to raise your hand in just a minute all right why am i asking you to do this because i want you to take a step i want you to go a little bit public with what you've done i want to be able to pray for you all right i want to see what god has done in in this room and across our church today so just prepare your heart it's like man i prayed these words but i'm not telling anybody well what since was it real jesus hung on a cross publicly for us we can take public steps for him and so i pray that you'll take this step listen no more playing around maybe god has brought you through an incredible journey over the last couple of years and it's culminating right now he's been orchestrating this moment in your life maybe for decades would you let me know if you place faith in christ today across all of our locations hey on the count of three if you place faith in christ you keep your heads bowed eyes closed just another minute here man on the count of three just raise your hand up high for me so that i can see it i can see what kind of fruit is here today all right if you accepted christ today man just uh raise your hand on the count of three one two three lift your hand up high praise god praise god lift your hand up high keep it up high for just a minute if you miss your chance here's another chance i'm the only one looking around all right there's people all over the room praise god you can put your hands down father i pray for those that accepted christ and god i pray for those that that that obviously are following you but need to take this other step that we're going to give them the opportunity to now in christ's name we pray amen you guys can look at me hey our invitation time is not over we got one more thing we're going to do all right and that is we're going to give everybody an opportunity to evaluate whether they need to go public and take that big step and get baptized this very weekend all right man what we what we believe at mercy hill informed through the scripture especially the book of acts is that baptism is the first step of discipleship in a new believer's life okay hey there was some of you i think in this service here and i don't know the campuses i bet it was the same in this service there was four or five people it seemed like uh man that raised their hand i put my faith in christ today the step for you is baptism that's not six months from now after we've discipled you now when you get in these waters you are going to be paired up with somebody who's going to take you on that journey okay but the step for you today is these baptismal waters in baptism we identify with christ i go down in the water into his death i come up bursting forth just like he did he came forth from the grave alive and i join him in that resurrection you need to take this step if you got saved today the time is now don't go home here's what's going to happen don't think about this later why would god want you to go out and spend weeks and months and maybe never do it and rob him publicly of the glory that he deserves for changing your life today all right that's not it if something's telling you not today that ain't of god if you're a believer and have never been baptized because the truth is that he wants you to get in the water if you become a believer uh today all right hey the other thing is this happens every time at mercy hill i bet you in a room this size i know across our campuses there are dozens of people you got saved as a kid you got saved as a youth at a youth camp you got saved two years ago at mercy hill but but you never took that step and now you're a little bit like man what are people going to think they don't know that i'm not baptized you know they don't know that i never took that step took that stuff there's no there's no way of knowing what kind of spiritual problems come from disobeying the first thing that god calls you to for years all right you don't have to do not for one more day make today the day man i'm going public with my profession of faith in these baptismal waters today all right you can do it today now you think well i didn't i didn't come i didn't come ready for that well we're ready for you okay we got we got everything that you're going to need all right um you think man i got clothes oh yeah we got clothes we got we got you know towels we got hair dryers for crying out loud okay we got everything that you're going to need uh we we have all that you know i know some of you in here are like man i got baptized as a kid and i don't know how your family's you know as a baby i mean i i don't know how my family's going to feel about that well baptism scripturally comes after you place your faith in christ i don't know exactly how your family's going to feel about it but i know this man taking this step today is walking in the life that they were trying to set you on to to walk a faithful life before god all right i know some of you are like man i came with people i don't know if they'll wait for me they'll wait for you okay all right and you're like you know and if they don't wait for you we got a whole brand new set of friends that'll wait for you here today okay so they will wait for you will you guys stand with me we all stand with me hey listen this is the moment okay here here's what we're gonna do if you need to get baptized and you know it and god is pulling your heart to do this all right if that's where you're at as soon as we start to play this song uh we're gonna just say hey just slip right out at all of our campuses there's a lobby you slip right out to the lobby and there will be baptism counselors out there waiting to greet you with a smile they want to talk to you they're not even our staff most of the time they're people from our congregation that are just regular everyday believers that are mature believers they want to talk to you about your story they want to see if this is the right step for you to take they want to connect with you so as soon as the music starts to play man if you know today's the day at all of our campuses you just step right out in that aisle and you go to the back and you nail this thing down publicly all right now let's do it